Acrylamide-based Saliva-gels as a Potential Xerostomia Treatment

Xerostomia often introduces impactful deficits in swallowing, oral communication, and oral hygiene. Current treatments only temporarily reduce symptoms without offering long-term benefits. While efforts to develop implantable salivary glands are ongoing, a cost-effective, easy-to-use, and non-invasive solution has yet to present itself. Here, we utilize biocompatible, acrylamide-based saliva-gels to control artificial saliva release and mimic natural saliva release properties. Specifically, we synthesized saliva-gels and tailored their mechanical properties (e.g., their tensile strength) by adjusting the loading of saliva in the polymer-based saliva-gels. Importantly, all saliva-gels were capable of swelling to ~ 650% of their initial volume over short time periods (3 h). Moreover, the optimized saliva-gel formulation released about 80% of the artificial saliva stored in its network within 24 h at a temperature of 37 °C (i.e., human body temperature). Additionally, the saliva released by the saliva-gels was chemically identical to that originally absorbed. This controlled release profile offers a proof-of-concept demonstration for the use of these materials in future xerostomia treatment applications.